


Don't look up

by No_stop_you_dont_understand



Category: Original Work
Genre: Churches & Cathedrals, Horror, Scary, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 23:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30046305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/No_stop_you_dont_understand/pseuds/No_stop_you_dont_understand
Summary: "Where are you going?" She asked me, fiddling with the pink ribbon on her sundress."Didn't you hear my mom? She said it was time to go.""No, I didn't hear anything." She frowned."Maybe you're right. I must be hearing things."





	Don't look up

**Author's Note:**

> Based on true events. Sort of.  
> Okay, not really.  
> Originally written for and intended to be submitted to We Are Watcher's YouTube series Are You Scared.  
> Unfortunately the story's a bit too short and I don't have the means to sign the release form, so this is as far as it'll go.  
> Enjoy my first foray into short-form horror :D  
> (And please let me know if there are any mistakes so I can fix em)

When I was a kid my friends and I would play around at church after the service while the adults talked for a little over an hour each Sunday. We made up games we could play to pass the time with long hallways, folding chairs, and dress shoes. We'd play tag, shoe dodgeball, and musical chairs when there were enough kids, but most Sunday afternoons it was just me and my best friend Courtney.  
When it was just the two of us our favorite game was to pretend that the vaulted ceilings were made of crystal and the old carpet was shining marble. Courtney was the princess and I was her faithful knight. We would fight our way through dragons and evil goblins while our mothers laughed and gossiped in the foyer. We danced with fairies in-between pews and sang with mermaids in the bathrooms, laughing and chasing each other from one end of the building to the other.  
There was only one place we would not play. It was a long dark hallway that cut through the middle of the church, connecting the foyer to the other side of the building. Heavy doors with brass knobs that squeaked with rust when they were turned blocked off either end of the hall and all light from outside.  
One day we were playing at the opposite end of the building from our parents when I thought I heard my mom call out that it was time to go. Her voice sounded distant and full of static, like it was coming through a radio a few rooms away. I began to walk the long way around back towards where our parents were waiting when Courtney called out to me. She tilted her head and furrowed her brow.  
"Where are you going?" She asked me, fiddling with the pink ribbon on her sundress.  
"Didn't you hear my mom? She said it was time to go."  
"No, I didn't hear anything." She frowned.  
"Maybe you're right. I must be hearing things." I shrugged and Courtney made a face at me.  
We picked up where we left off in our game, dancing through the imaginary sleeping village to meet the evil witch, when I heard it again.  
The voice crackled and popped, the words too muffled through the walls for me to make out what it said.  
"Courtney? Are you sure you didn't just hear that? I definitely heard someone talking." I was starting to get frustrated, there was no way only I heard it.  
"All I hear is your dumb butt acting like you don't want to play anymore." She folded her arms and stuck her tongue out at me.  
"Well I think we should head back just in case. I don't want to get in trouble."  
"Ugh fine." Courtney grabbed my arm and began dragging me back the way we came. We passed one of the big stained glass windows and the sky was dark and overcast even though it should've been light out. Through the gaps in the clouds faint rays of the fading light passed through panes of red glass and cast tinted shadows on old folding chairs and pictures of angels framed on the wall.  
When we turned the corner our path was blocked. Someone had closed and locked the doors between the bathrooms and the back meeting room, and a chair was pushed up under the door handle on our side.  
"That's weird, I thought we were the last people to come this way. Why would someone put a chair here?"  
Courtney rolled her eyes, "Obviously we weren't the last ones through. The janitor was probably cleaning the bathrooms and locked the door behind him when he left."  
There were two other ways to get to the other side of the church. We could go outside and walk around the building or we could go through the dark hallway that smelled like old books and rust.  
Courtney and I walked back past the framed angels and the coat closet towards the building's back door.  
I reached for the handle and the air felt thick with unease. Something was off. The other door shouldn't have been locked - the janitor didn't come on Sundays.  
A loud crash of thunder boomed from outside as a flash of lightning lit up the room through the stained glass window. Courtney shrieked and I jumped in surprise, turning the handle quickly and shoving the door open. Wind whipped the trees outside and blew the rain inwards through the now open door. As quickly as I opened it, I slammed the door shut.  
I chuckled weakly, "I guess we can't go that way either, can we?"  
Courtney shook her head. Neither of us wanted to get in trouble for ruining our Sunday best.  
That left only one way for us to get back to our parents.  
It took some effort, but together we were able to twist the stiff brass doorknob and push the heavy door open. We gazed down the dark hallway, the dim red light from outside only illuminating the ground a few feet in front of us. Courtney reached out and grabbed my hand, her palms clammy and her eyes wide.  
"If we run we can make it to the other side really quick."  
I nodded and we counted to three together. The door creaked and slammed shut behind us as we ran, cutting off the only source of light we had.  
The church was old and this hallway was rarely used, so no one had yet installed the wiring for a light fixture to replace the brass sconces that once had been lit by gas.  
Courtney jerked to a stop and I stumbled past her, my eyes wide open and unseeing in the heavy darkness that surrounded us.  
"That- that voice you heard earlier- what did it sound like?" Courtney's voice shook like she was about to cry.  
"It- uh it sounded like it was coming over a radio or a walkie talkie. Why do you ask?"  
"Because I can hear it right now." A loud sob wrenched its way from her throat and she gripped both of my hands tightly.  
"Courtney," I whispered, "what's it saying?"  
She whimpered quietly and I wrapped my arms around her, feeling my own eyes well up with tears. I asked her again, urgently.  
"What's it telling you, Courtney?"  
"It said- it said- do-" she was hyperventilating, unable to speak clearly in her panic,"d-don't look up."  
I didn't notice at first, thinking my eyes were just adjusting to the dark, but as she spoke the room was slowly being illuminated by a red light coming from above us.  
Her features swam in my vision through my tears; I blinked them away to see her staring into my eyes. Her breathing slowed and grew more shallow as she raised her gaze up to the source of the red light above us. Her jaw dropped and her face paled.  
Courtney's pupils dilated to the point where I could no longer see the color of her irises. As I looked into her unblinking eyes I was frozen in terror. I could not see what she saw but I could hear the voice again.  
"Don't….. Look…. Up…. Don't….. Look…. Up… Don't Look Up… Don't Look Up… Don't Look Up. Don't Look Up. Don't Look Up."  
It began to chant faster and faster, crackling and popping with static and coming from every direction at once.  
Courtney's body collapsed into my arms like she was a puppet whose strings had been severed. I snapped out of my frozen terror and I realized that I couldn't hear her gasping breath anymore. I let her gently slip to the floor and shut my eyes tight. I pressed two fingers to her wrist and checked for a pulse the way they do in movies. I waited for what felt like an hour, but I couldn't feel anything but my own heart beating in my ears with a jackhammer rhythm.  
I let go and her wrist dropped with a horrible thud. My tongue felt dry and swollen in my throat and my eyes itched, but I kept them closed.  
Forcing myself to move, I ran. I kept running and the voice followed me as my the soles of my feet throbbed with every thumping step I took. I didn't stop moving until I stumbled into the door at the other end of the hallway.  
Somehow the handle turned easily and silently and the door opened with hardly any effort on my part.  
My skin felt hot and I couldn't catch my breath and something was different now that I was no longer in that dreadful hallway. It was silent. I could not hear the voice.  
When I opened my eyes I did not look back to see if Courtney's body still lay there crumpled in the hallway. 

*,*,*,*,*

If you ask anyone else what happened to Courtney all those years ago, they'll say that she'd had a heart attack.

They won't tell you how the church hallway where she died smelled suspiciously of iron and the sweet scent of decay lingered there for months even though she'd been carried out only hours after her death. They won't tell you how the door at the far end of the hallway was locked from the inside and the paramedics had to break that old brass handle to get in.

But, if you ask me, I'll tell you that if you visit that old church with the folding chairs and moldy carpet; the one with the stained glass windows and the framed pictures of angels; the church with the long dark hallway with brass sconces, heavy doors on either end and matching squeaky brass handles; I'll tell you that whatever you do, don't look up.

**Author's Note:**

> My friend and I used to dare each other to run down this long dark hallway that the church didn't really use and there were these red emergency lights up on the ceiling shaped like eyes. We would shriek and giggle and scream, "The red eye!"  
> The doors felt really hard to open too, but I think that was because we were little kids.  
> This is inspired by how fucking scared I remember being of that hallway.


End file.
